Maximising Cost Savings – Travel smarter and manage your travel programme effectively 

Under Direct ATPI and ATPI Corporate Travel we offer tailored solutions for corporate businesses globally, that reduce costs and offer valuable insights into their travel programme. 

Business travel is essential for companies building client relationships and expanding operations. However, corporate travel budget management can be challenging when balancing cost control, employee experience and programme leakage. Businesses can reduce business travel expenses and the average trip cost, while maintaining convenience by implementing strategic policies, leveraging technology, and utilising expert travel management.   

While booking in advance and showing flexibility with dates & times brings the biggest cost-savings overall, our team of Direct ATPI award-winning Global Partnership Managers are experts at ensuring businesses are getting the best deals on their business travel. Here are six proven business travel cost-saving strategies to ensure cost efficiency without sacrificing a smooth travel experience.  

1. Utilise regional airports 

Regional airports offer fantastic value for money – often with the added benefit of fewer queues. Travellers and travel managers should consider Liverpool over Manchester, or Stansted over Heathrow for extra savings. It’s always worth checking what the difference in cost could be” – Sam Davies, ATPI Director of Corporate Partnerships. 

2. Ensure travellers are booking within policy and through the correct channels 

While this sounds obvious, it’s always a great place to start as ‘programme leakage’ where travellers book out of policy or directly through suppliers, causes headaches when looking at cost-savings as these bookings often go unrecorded, making it difficult to accurately track the total spend when it’s time to renegotiate room rates for the following year. Without a clear record, the hotel may believe that the business travel spend has decreased compared to the previous year, potentially leading to higher rates.  

Additionally, bookings made in this way are not tracked by duty of care providers, which can compromise the safety and well-being of employees when travelling. To ensure transparency and better-negotiated rates, it’s important to make all hotel bookings through the official channels, your TMC or OBT, and adhere to preferred programme guidelines.  – Shirley-Ann Soar, Global Partnerships Manager 

3. Implement a travel approval tool (TAS) to help control costs 

If you can put in place a business travel approval tool, you can ensure policy is adhered to and quickly drive behaviour change from your travellers and limit costs. At Direct ATPI, we have built our own tool to streamline approvals for our customers simply and effectively. This will significantly help with cost-saving and ensure travellers book within the recommended parameters. Of course, there is room for exceptions, and having approval at the manager or regional level will also remove the burden from the travel manager.  – Nick Brockbank, Global Partnerships Manager 

4. Know what’s happening in your organisation 

Meet regularly with key stakeholders to understand what new projects are on the roadmap that will impact on the travel programme.  For example, if the sales team have just won a new customer, which will result in a spike in business travel to a certain destination, knowing this in advance will allow time to negotiate key supplier discounts at preferred local hotels and the best airline discounts and route deals.   

We often see a spike in figures, but we only understand why afterwards, which is too late to negotiate discounts, so be proactive. You could also send out quarterly reminders to book travel for the upcoming months with a link to your TravelHub, or details to call. Make it as easy as possible for your travellers to book in advance and stay in policy.  – Gemma Spooner, Global Partnerships Manager 

5. Work with your suppliers throughout the year 

Having open communication with your TMC and suppliers is pivotal to your business travel cost-savings strategy. Let them know your goals and requirements so they can work with you (and make you look great to your stakeholders!). Incentives, additional training, more substantial route deals or soft benefits are the key to savings and benefits, so engage them with your programme. Plus, they can show you the cost savings or cost avoidance that they’ve brought to you, which shows their value and saves you a job! Travel Managers are busier than ever, like most things, ‘it takes a village’, so use them.  – Liz Brown, Global Partnerships Manager 

6. Plan effectively and leverage rewards 

Highlight your preferred Airlines and Hotels and ensure travellers sign up to their loyalty schemes and utilise supplier corporate rewards while staying within the travel policy. By doing this, not only will it encourage them to book preferred suppliers, but they can accumulate rewards quicker and receive free upgrades whilst reducing the cost of the published air or hotel fares.

Keep a close eye on when these are due to expire and aim to redeem on routes that tend to have higher fares to maximise savings for your business too. This is mutually beneficial to both your travellers and suppliers. Plus, if you are a large organisation, you could even see if your preferred suppliers will give any additional incentives to your travellers to ensure loyalty to your programme. It’s always worth an ask and helps ensure travellers book through the correct channels rather than going direct. – Dan Seymour, Global Partnerships Manager 

Driving Travel Savings Without Compromising Quality 

Implementing business travel cost-saving strategies within your travel programme is essential for maximising ROI whilst maintaining traveller satisfaction. Companies can significantly reduce travel expenditure without compromising quality by ensuring policy compliance, deploying approval tools, maintaining proactive supplier relationships, and educating travellers. The most successful travel programmes balance cost control with traveller experience, leveraging technology and expert travel management to achieve optimal results.  

Working closely with your Travel Management Company enables access to valuable insights and better rates tailored to your organisation’s unique requirements. Remember that travel programme optimisation requires regular assessment. If businesses adopt these proven strategies while maintaining open communication with stakeholders and suppliers, they can achieve substantial savings on corporate travel while meeting duty of care obligations and supporting travellers in today’s competitive business environment.  

To find out more about our corporate team and how we can help you visit: https://www.atpi.com/contact-us/